


Angel

by Onlymostydead



Series: Jason Todd Month [2]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Human Trafficking Mention, Implied/Referenced Drug Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homelessness, Prison mention, Religious Symbolism, Roman Catholicism, Trans Jason Todd, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Wingfic, canon character death, minor dysphoria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 14:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20193808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onlymostydead/pseuds/Onlymostydead
Summary: It isn't worth it, for Jason, to correct his mom. Not when she thinks dad is alive, not when she thinks they can still go to church on Sunday, and not when she calls him her Angel.Not when she'll just forget.





	Angel

**Author's Note:**

> This fic ended up... Taking a turn. So... Enjoy?

"Let no one make you ashamed of them, Angel." His mom whispered gently, as she brushed through his long hair, soon to be carefully pulling back every strand into a neat braid in hopes it wouldn't fall into his face and get dirty again. 

They both knew it would.

"Let no one make you ashamed of your wings."

"I'm not ashamed of them, just annoyed." Jason huffed, shifting his wings behind him. "They're huge, and hard to hide, and..."

"You don't need to hide." The hairbrush caught on a tangle. "They're a gift from God, my Angel... A gift from God."

She always got like this about mid hit, when she was high enough to be mellow, but not quite far enough down to be falling asleep yet, back into the emptiness. It was one of Jason's favorite times, when she was gentle. When she would patiently brush his hair and call him Angel.

He hated the hair brushing.

He hated being called Angel.

Being called a gift from God by her when every religious circle insisted that he was going to hell.

But... He still wouldn't trade away this time for the world.

"Yes, mom." 

"Mm..." His mom hummed, the beginning to a hymn, one of the really old ones; Jason didn't know any of the words. "What's today? You'll need to shower before church."

He swallowed. "Monday. It's Monday."

He didn't have the heart to tell her they hadn't been to church for years, not since they were excommunicated for, well... A lot of things. Somewhere between her addiction and his devilish behavior and refusal to be the 'little girl' they wanted him to be... It had been a long time since they had been back. 

"Oh." She sighed, setting down the hairbrush and beginning to braid. "I could have... Well, you'll have to remind me when Sunday comes around, Angel. I'll even drag your dad along, whether he likes it or not."

"Y-yeah." Jason's throat tightened. "I'm sure we can drag him along. Maybe even get him to say a rosary."

Mom laughed. "I doubt it - you'd have to lead him through the words, Angel. Like I used to, when you were just a little girl."

He flinched, but said nothing. It wasn't worth fighting; none of it was. Tomorrow she would forget again. She would forget that dad died in prison, and he was a boy, just like she forgot they were excommunicated. All he could do was enjoy the lucid moments she had, and...

And...

Jason blinked the tears out of his eyes. He had to be the one here for his mom. He had to be here, to be her Angel, to be her gift from a God who seemed to have abandoned her to a life in crime alley, no doubt dying young from the drug addiction. 

No, he couldn't think about dying. He couldn't think about her dying. 

"What is it? Is something wrong?"

He shook his head. "Nothing's wrong, mom. Just thinking."

"You're too young to sit so quiet and think so much." She pointed out as she started braiding his hair, pulling each strand a little too tight just like she always did. "Too mature. I guess that's my fault, letting you grow up too fast... Or your dad, always telling you things and teaching you things...."

"I don't think it's bad."

"Of course you don't." His mom sighed, tugging a little too hard, even for her, on a strand. "You're just a kid, now, Angel. When you're older, then you'll learn. You'll look back and wonder where your childhood went. You'll wonder... I'm sorry, Angel."

Jason squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to cry. "Don't be sorry, mom. It's okay."

It wasn't okay. Because this was the first time she had been lucid in a long time, and Jason didn't know when, or if, she would be again. 

And yeah, he could take care of himself okay, but being 'a gift from God' didn't exactly make it easier. That just meant grubbier men wanted to grab him off the streets and sell him for higher prices to a different crowd. There weren't many winged kids around these days, and out of most of the ones he knew, when they disappeared, their bodies showed up not long later. Either that, or they became billionaires pets, pretty things for rich people to play with.

He was a religious symbol to some, a freak of nature to others, a rare piece of merchandise to most opportunists in Gotham's underbelly. 

But he couldn't remind her of that. He just had to sit here quietly, too quietly for an almost eleven year old, and let her braid her Angel's hair. Let her sit here with her Angel.

It was all he could do.

"Here, I'll make it up to you. Hold the end of your braid." She instructed, handing him the end of his hair.

Jason obediently took the hair, hating the weight, the femininity of it, but... Not wanting to lose this. But the weight of his hair was joined by another around his neck: the weight of his mother's rosary.

It wasn't like his own cheap, plastic rosary that he probably made as a kid at the church as a little kid. Her's had been made to last. He didn't know the story behind the worn beads, the already faded spots, but it could have belonged to someone before her, even. There were placed that worried fingers had rubbed at over and over, prayers recited again and again...

He wished he had gotten to ask her, but already he could tell the braid was getting less tight. Her concentration was slipping, and with it, her consciousness.

"Thank you, mom."

"You're welcome, my Angel..."

He finished the braid himself, and helped her off to bed.

***

The next morning, his mom was back to her normal, vacant self. She laid still in her bed, limbs stiff, glassy green eyes set forward, hand reaching out toward nothing. This was how she was most days - never moving, never talking, just... Staring. Blinking. Twitching once in a while, maybe rolling over.

Jason sighed, sitting up and stretching out his wings. These were the days he didn't feel as bad about leaving, though. Because he knew that his mom didn't see him. She didn't hear him. Right now, he had one job: get food on the table. 

Throwing his dad's old jacket over his wings to cover them, he cast one last look over his shoulder at his mom and...

With a second thought, he stepped back in, said a quick prayer on his mother's rosary, then headed out the door.

Gift from God, after all. Whether he acted it or not.

***

It was dark out by the time Jason stumbled back into the apartment, legs tired from running, drizzled wet from the perpetual Gotham rain, and a little bit hungry, but clutching a still-warm bag of fast food to his chest under his dad's old jacket. He shut the door behind him, shrugging off the jacket and shaking out his damp wings. 

"Mom, I'm home!"

No response. Not like he expected one, anyway; she wouldn't eat very much of the food, either... Not that there was very much of it, though. Being a 'little girl' in a giant coat looked more than a little bit conspicuous, no matter how sneaky of a pickpocket he was. That certainly made it harder.

And that's just how life is, his dad's voice seemed to remind him. You pick yourself up by the bootstraps and get over it. 

Though he wasn't quite sure how pulling yourself up by the bootstraps worked, Jason agreed. With a deep breath, just to prepare himself to shift back to helping his mom, he headed back into their bedroom.

There she was, lying there, right where he left her, and-

Right where he left her.

Exactly.

Eyes open.

Perfectly still.

"Mom?"

No response.

No breath, no movement, not when he shook her, when he tried to take her pulse, when he pulled her eyes open. Nothing. Her body was cold.

"Mom!?"

And no Angel, no gift from God could bring her back.

***

Jason fell asleep crying over her.

When he woke up in the morning it was confused, with his wings draped all the way over the bed, his face buried in his mother's chest. Strange. They must've fallen asleep cuddling, but it was rare she was lucid enough for that by bedtime. So why was he...

Then everything came back.

Wings fluttering together, Jason hit the wall as he flew backward, terror seizing his heart.

His mom was dead.

Dead.

He knew it would happen eventually. Just last night he was trying not to think about it, but it was different for it to-

He choked.

She was dead.

Tears began to well up in his eyes again, and Jason curled up into a little ball, wrapping himself up in his wings. All of a sudden she was just... Gone. How? How could she just-

Deep breaths.

Unfurling his wings, slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. Bootstraps, right? He knew what he had to do. 

He knew what he had to do.

At this point, after being dead who knows how long, Jason couldn't move around her body, really, but he could close her eyes, and pull up the covers. That felt like the right thing to do. 

He wasn't hungry, but he shoved the food he got last night into his dad's coat pocket, then checked to make sure he had the pocket knife his dad gave him, and his rosary. 

Not his little kid rosary anymore; his mom's rosary.

He wondered if she knew. If it was on purpose, if she left him here alone, if she had done it, but-

But it didn't matter. What was done was done.

And right now... He had one last thing to do.

Jason grabbed the pocket knife and his old rosary and headed to the apartments dingy little bathroom. He flicked on the light, and...

He wasn't going to look at himself. He wasn't going to see his total lack of his mom's features. He knew why; his dad told him she wasn't his biological mom. It only made him sad because he couldn't say that he had her eyes, or her smile. He always failed to be much like her any other time, after all. 

But right now, he was on a mission, and he wasn't about the get distracted. Taking the pocket knife, and grabbing his braid in the other hand, Jason braced himself and began to cut, sawing through the hair. 

And it wasn't clean.

It wasn't pretty.

He had to saw through, and it cut unevenly, and slowly, and it wasn't magical, and he could imagine his mother crying over it, but-

Braid and childhood rosary in hands, he walked back to the bedroom and tucked them into her cold, empty, outstretched hand.

So that she would have a rosary, even though he had hers. 

So that she could still play with her Angel's hair.

Her gift from God.

"You'd better be good to her!" Jason shouted at the sky, as if that would change anything. "She deserved better then this."

He choked, wiping tears away from his eyes again. "A hell of a lot better than this."

With his coat packed full of anything he could need, all the emergency cash they had, Jason took his dad's pocketknife to the hair around his face again, cutting it shorter, making it more masculine, trying to clean it up. He copied his dad's, what his looked like. It was probably bad, and choppy as hell, but... 

He looked like a boy. Like a little boy. And at least that was something.

So he gave his mom one final kiss on the forehead, then he was out on his own.

***

"Robin? Really?" Jason's eyes were wide as Bruce Wayne, his new legal guardian, explained to him the situation. "After I stole your tires, yelled at ya, then hit you with a tire iron?"

When he was first taken in by the billionaire, he thought he was a publicity stunt, a pretty photograph. Once he got cleaned up, and the pretty 'little girl' with the pure white wings got her pictures taken with the charitable Bruce Wayne, things would get a lot less pretty.

But he couldn't have been more wrong.

Bruce nodded. "You have guts, as you're also extremely intelligent. You alerted authorities to that trafficking ring in the home you were placed under in a manner I find very interesting as well as effective."

He frowned, crossing his arms and shuffling his wings. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"Not everyone is willing to go to such an extent to guarantee that."

"Not everyone is used to being the one traffickers are going after all the time." Jason snapped back. "Sorry. That wasn't..."

"No, you're right. The streets were more dangerous for you than most."

He shrugged. "Sure, sure. But Robin! Really?"

Bruce nodded again. "The position is open, and you seem like you'd be quite capable... With some training."

"I... Thank you. I won't let you down."

He smiled. "I'm sure you won't. Now, training, tomorrow morning?"

Jason nearly flew up off the ground. "Yeah! I- wait. I... Can't. Not tomorrow. Monday, maybe?"

Bruce gave him an odd look, but nodded. "Monday."

***

And the next morning, Sunday morning, Jason Todd stood in the back of the Sunday service, feeling like more of a ghost than an angel, his mother's rosary heavy around his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> (I know the rosary is not required to pray - Jason isn't very religious and it's a tie to his mother, who is, so it makes him feel more connected to her)
> 
> Well, if you liked that, you can find me on tumblr at Supertinywords and Supertinybats!
> 
> Requests are open!
> 
> Comments are love <3


End file.
